T-L Photo/ROBERT A. DEFRANK John Korogianis, right, customer success manager with Dominion Voting Systems, describes the benefits of Adjudication software Tuesday to Belmont County Board of Elections members including Michael Shaheen, from left, Lois Doneson, Director Aaron Moore and Deputy Director Kamron Chervenak.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Board of Elections is integrating some new technology into its Election Day operations.

On Tuesday the board heard from John Korogianis, customer success manager with Dominion Voting Systems, about the potential advantages of using the Adjudication software, which is already part of the system. He said this would come at no increased cost to the county, since the software is already installed on its machines, but some staff training might be arranged while Dominion is field-testing them.

Aaron Moore elaborated after the meeting.

“It’s a software that allows us to track write-ins easier. So our current processes on Election Night, the scanners separate the write-in ballots for us, we go through and we are able to sit down and look at each candidate ballot and then we enter it into the system,” he said.

“This now, when the ballot gets scanned an image gets sent of it, so when we upload the memory card we get to see the image on the screen. So from the image on the screen we can verify who the write-in was for,” he said. “This will be used to help us in reporting that night, but we will afterwards — before the official election — go through the ballots (by hand) to verify any information was accurate.”

The software will not read handwriting, but it will detect the presence of handwriting. There will be an electronic “trail” to follow after Election Night.

“We’re hoping to actually have it ready this primary,” he said, referring to the March 19 election, which includes numerous Republican Central Committee candidates as well as four candidates vying for the Republican nominations to two Belmont County commission seats.

“It definitely will cut down on the time it takes us to get our final reports out. In the past, we’ve had to go through all the bags. We’ve had to sort through all the ballots to find all of those ballots and then hand enter them all individually into the system. Now we’re able to use the system to view those ballots and hand key them in that way,” he said.

Moore said this would likely reduce counting time by hours.

The software could also provide other services.

“We would like to work with the Adjudication for the write-in purposes right now. We will see how that works and see how comfortably we feel and any other features that comes with it we will implement later,” he said. “It would work for mail-in ballots whenever there was any issues with ambiguous marks, overvotes, things like that which would normally be flagged for the board to look at, now they can be flagged and put on the screen so it is a little less work we would have to do to gather this stuff together.”

Moore said he is confident in the board of elections’ system and noted that automation and computer use will still be checked by humans.

“We are all still paper ballots. Ballots still get reviewed. We will still go through each handwritten write-in after the unofficial to confirm everything for the official,” Moore said.

He added that Dominion has always worked well with the county.

“We’ve never had any issues with their equipment and their machines, and they’ve always been very helpful in making sure that everything runs smoothly.”

In other matters, Moore said the Ohio Secretary of State’s office is offering online training for poll workers.

“We have not used that here in our office, but we would like to review it, see if it works and try to implement it here into our office. We don’t know how we’re going to use it completely yet or how we’re going to work it in,” Moore said, adding that his could cut down on the number of poll workers to be trained by acting as a refresher for returning, veteran poll workers.

Also, the one-hour training with electronic poll books will be combined with the three-hour training for poll workers to create one three-hour training session before the election.

Moore said his office projects an adequate number of poll workers, but additional alternate poll workers are always welcome, particularly during a presidential election year.

He said absentee and early voting will begin Feb. 21.

Moore said a special general election will be held June 11 for the 6th Congressional District. Bill Johnson has stepped down from the seat to take a position as president of Youngstown State University.

The Belmont County Board of Election office is located at 52180 National Road East, St. Clairsville. The phone number is 740-526-0188.